Whitehead: A Life of the Mind in the World

1998 ◽  
pp. 3-13
Keyword(s):  
The World ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Mind

Educational Thinking and the Conservation of the Revolutionary

2010 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 488-508
Author(s):  
Eduardo Manuel Duarte
Keyword(s):  
Multicultural Education ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Digital Archives ◽  
Little Rock ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Background Context ◽  
Educational Thinking

Background/Context Prior work on Hannah Arendt and education has focused on democratic education, multicultural education, and conservatism in education. Most of these studies have concentrated on her essay, “The Crisis in Education.” While this study extends that work, it does so by taking up the lesser studied but equally relevant piece, “Reflections on Little Rock.” Furthermore, sparse attention has been paid to Arendt's work on thinking in relation to work on education. This piece seeks to fill these gaps in the scholarship on Arendt and education. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Following Arendt, my inquiry is concerned with what we might call “the life of the student mind.” Two central questions guide this inquiry: What are students qua students doing that prepares them in advance for renewing a common world? How, as students, are they engaged with the world without being asked to take responsibility for it? Research Design This study is a comparative exegesis of Arendt, reading her early essays, “Reflections on Little Rock” and “The Crisis in Education,” through the lens of Thinking, the first volume of her final and posthumously published work, The Life of the Mind. The study is heavily supported by research conducted in the Arendt digital archives. Conclusions/Recommendations This exegesis reveals new insights into Arendt's mapping of the educational sphere and the principal activity taking place therein, namely, educational thinking. The close comparative reading of Arendt's early and later work produces a philosophical construction of the educational sphere as a liminal zone between past and future, a gap between the private sphere of the home, and the political sphere of the public realm. In turn, the primary result of this study is the articulation of a distinctly Arendtian conception of educational thinking as occurring in an existential space of solitude where students, withdrawn from the continuity of everyday life, engage in an activity that enables them to reflect upon and critically reimagine the world and thereby prepare for world-caring.

scholarly journals Windows of the Soul in the Worldview of Philo of Alexandria

Perichoresis ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-20
Author(s):  
Aurelian Botica
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Philo Of Alexandria ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind

Abstract One of the most important paradigm shifts in the history of Greek philosophy was the ‘rediscovery’ of transcendence in the movement of Intermediate Platonism. Less than a century before the birth of Hellenism (late 4th century BC), Plato had advocated an intentional preoccupation with the life of the mind / soul, encouraging the individual to avoid being entrapped in the material limitations of life and instead discover its transcendental dimension. The conquest of Athens by the Macedonians, followed by the invasion of the Orient by Alexander the Great, set in motion sociological and cultural changes that challenged the relevance of Platonic philosophy. The transcendental vision of Platonism left the individual still struggling to find happiness in the world created by Alexander the Great. This was the context in which the schools the of Cynicism, Stoicism, Epicureanism and Skepticism challenged Platonism with their call to happiness in this world and by means of the Hellenistic dominance and the rise of Roman supremacy stirred a renewed spiritual and philosophical effort to rediscover the world beyond; that is, the transcendental world of Plato. This was Middle Platonism and the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria was one of its most prolific writers. In this paper, we will examine the concept of the soul in the writings of Philo, with an emphasis on the role that the soul plays in the act of approaching God through the means of the external / material cult (Temple, sacrifices, priests, etc.). Philo offers a complex vision of the soul, one that remains critically relevant to understanding the Greek, Jewish, and Christian thought that emerged after Philo.

And Worldlessness, Alas, is Always a Kind of Barbarism: Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Educating in Worldless Times

2010 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 509-532
Author(s):  
Stephanie Mackler
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Specific Aspect ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Best Response ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Thinking Differently ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Human Condition

Background/Context In 1958, Hannah Arendt wrote “The Crisis in Education,” arguing that schools should not be used for political purposes and should instead introduce children to what she calls “the world.” The world, for Arendt, comprises the artifacts, ideas, values, and interactions that connect people together. In that same year, she published The Human Condition, a damning analysis of the problem of what she calls “world alienation” in the modern era. By this, she means that we experience a radical sense of disconnection and alienation from the physical and social world we share with others. The tension between these two pieces is provocative, because one advocates giving children a world, while the other suggests that there is no longer a world to give. Purpose/Objective This article begins from the aforementioned point of tension to consider what Arendt might have said about education in 2008, particularly in light of the discussion of world alienation in The Human Condition and Arendt's later work on thinking in The Life of the Mind. Although Arendt's analysis of worldlessness is multifaceted, this article focuses on one specific aspect of her argument: the way our very approaches to thinking— including the way we conduct scholarly inquiry—contribute to the loss of the world. Research Design This work is philosophical in nature, focusing on several of Hannah Arendt's published works. Conclusions/Recommendations Drawing on Arendt's work on thinking, the author argues that the best response to worldlessness is a specific type of thinking. The article concludes by suggesting that educational researchers and practitioners consider the ways in which education is currently implicated in the problem of world alienation, as well as the ways that we can start thinking differently in response. “The future man, whom the scientists tell us they will produce in no more than a hundred years, seems to be possessed by a rebellion against human existence as it has been given a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it were, for something he has made himself.”1

Analytic Theology as a Spiritual Practice

2021 ◽  
pp. 175-190
Author(s):  
William Wood
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Practice ◽  
Spiritual Life ◽  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Spiritual Exercises ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Authentic Development ◽  
The Mind

Part III calls for a more theological analytic theology and defends analytic theology from some common theological objections. Many theologians reject analytic theology because they find it too abstract and spiritually sterile to count as genuine theology. In contrast, I argue that analytic theology may be understood as a spiritual practice. Intellectual practices are also spiritual exercises when they (1) aim at self-improvement or liberation, instead of simply the acquisition of knowledge; (2) discipline the passions, since unchecked passions and immoderate desires are the enemy of both the spiritual life and the life of the mind; (3) help us see the world as it really is, rather than as we imagine or wish it to be; and (4) help us cultivate specific virtues that are at once intellectual and moral, like attention or concentration. It is in these senses that analytic theology can be understood as a spiritual practice. Analytic theology is an authentic development of a tradition of Christian philosophical theology, which includes Anselm and Aquinas as members, and which treats theology as both theoretical and practical at once.

The Ugly Psyche: Arendt and the Right to Opacity

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-198
Author(s):  
Anne O’Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Oedipus Complex ◽  
Specific Question ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Sensus Communis ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract Arendt was famously dismissive of the work of psychologists, claiming that they did nothing more than reveal the pervasive ugliness and monotony of the psyche. If we want to know who people are, she argued, we should observe what they do and say rather than delving into the turmoil of their inner lives; if we want to understand humanity, we would be better off reading Oedipus Rex than hearing about someone’s Oedipus complex. The rejection has a certain coherence in the context of her understanding of public life as the realm of appearance and opinion, but examining it through the specific question of ugliness complicates that understanding. While beauty invites us to contemplate the world and admire it, ugliness repels our attention and sows the seed of a worry that the world might not want to be known. Working with Eichmann in Jerusalem, The Life of the Mind: Thinking, the Kant lectures and a striking Denktagebuch entry in which she reacts with revulsion to Matisse’s Heads of Jeannette, I argue that Arendt’s response to the ugly psyche requires a re-examination of the sensus communis. If the psyche does not want to be known, and if not all points of view are open to imaginative occupation, the ideal and practice of enlarged mentality must reckon with a right to opacity.

Keep the Days

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven M. Stowe
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Historical Empathy ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Changing World

Americans wrote fiercely during their civil war. War surprised, devastated, and opened up imagination, taking hold of Americans’ words as well as their homes and families. The personal diary—wildly ragged yet rooted in day following day—was one place Americans wrote their war. Diaries, then, have become one of the best-known, most-used sources for exploring the life of the mind in a war-torn place and time. Delving into several familiar wartime diaries kept by women of the southern slave-owning class, Steven Stowe recaptures their motivations to keep the days close even as war tore apart the brutal system of slavery that had benefited them. Whether the diarists recorded thoughts about themselves, their opinions about men, or their observations about slavery, race, and warfare, Stowe shows how these women, by writing the immediate moment, found meaning in a changing world. In studying the inner lives of these unsympathetic characters, Stowe also explores the importance—and the limits—of historical empathy as a condition for knowing the past. He demonstrates how the plain, first-draft text of a diary can offer new ways to make sense of the world in which these Confederate women lived.

Nihilistic Thinking as the Self-Will of the Mind and the Projects of Its Overcoming

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (10) ◽  
pp. 74-87
Author(s):  
Irina N. Sidorenko
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
The Self ◽  
Spatial Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Radical Transformation

 The author analyzes the conceptions of ontological nihilism in the works of S. Kierkegaard, F. Nietzsche, M. Heidegger, E. Jünger. On the basis of this analysis, violence is defined as a manifestation of nihilism, of the “will to nothingness” and hypertrophy of the self-will of man. The article demonstrates the importance of the problem of nihilism. The nihilistic thinking of modern man is expressed in the attitude toward a radical transformation of the world from the position of his “absolute” righteousness. The paradox of the current situation is that there is the reverse side of this transformative activity, when there is only the appearance of action and the dilution of responsibility. Confidence in the rightness of own views and beliefs increases the risk of the violent imposition of own vision of reality. Historical and philosophical reconstruction of the conceptions of nihilism allowed to reveal the following projects of its comprehension and resolution: (1) the project of “positing of values,” which consists in the transformation of the evaluation, which is understood as another perspective of positing values, leading to the affirmation of being; (2) the project of overcoming nihilism from the space of temporality, carried out through the resoluteness to accept the historicity of own existence; (3) the project of overcoming nihilism as the oblivion of being from the spatial perspective of the “line,” allowing to realize the “glimpse” of being. The author concludes that it is impossible to solve the problem of violence and its various forms of its manifestation without overcoming “ontological nihilism.” Significant role in solving the problem of ontological violence is assigned to philosophy as a critical and responsible form of thinking, which is capable to help a person to bear the burden of the world, to provide meanings and affirm being, as well as to unite people and resist the fundamentalist claims of exclusivity and rightness.

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